This year, my “powered by solar” reads as 42% (similar for previous years), but I actually overproduce. Shouldn’t the percentage be >100% in this case? The “grid” basically acts just as storage. (It is actually better than that, because I am on a TOU plan and feed the grid at the high day rate and get it back at night at a lower rate)
Obviously there are many ways to define that percentage number. I am curious what formula is used to get 42% from the values shown. Wouldn’t it be more useful to calculate (or alt least also display) net over/under-production.
You are explaining/expecting net metering and this is not the case with sense. Sense is only showing you the percentage of self use (consumption) of solar generation. We have been waiting for sense to do net metering for years, but still no progress.
I’m wondering if both you guys are on an old version of the app ? I thought Sense moved that number from the “self-powered” % to the net metered % a while ago. That’s certainly how it works in both the non-beta web app for me as well as my version of the iOS app. Production / Usage
I’m wondering if both you guys are on an old version of the app ?
The above picture is from the web interface hosted at sense (i.e. no app) and my (fully updated) android app also displays only a “powered by solar” value. Can you show a screenshot of what you are seeing?
Well, “net metering” is more of a billing contract between utility and consumer (It is a can of worms for a company like Sense because rates can depend on season, time of day, direction of flow, rate plan, tier, zone, etc. and can differ for each zip code. Yes, Sense does not allow entering TOU rates and such and I don’t really care about that. Note that in my picture (upper right) both say 0$).
My question was about the definition of the “powered by solar” value.
Upon further analysis, it is simply:
PoweredBySolar = 100*(Usage - FromGrid)/Usage
Which is just not a very interesting number. They could additionally display other derived values such as Usage/production or Production/usage. There is room!
Thanks for correcting me on the formula. I thought it was a simple as Production / Usage (x 100% of course). I agree that leaving “to grid” energy out of the numerator doesn’t really give a useful number.
